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This week's Decent Fucking Human is Paula. Her fucked up story is about being raised by a toxic mother who tried to murder her as an infant. Other topics in this episode include narcissistic abuse, alcoholism, and anxiety.
Paula's mother tried to kill her. She was only 3 months old the first time it happened, and five months old the second. It's taken her a lifetime to piece together and process what happened, and there are still friends, family, and acquaintances who don't believe her story.
It's not surprising that people don't want to believe her. Mothers hold a special place in society, and many want to believe that even the most flawed ones are well-intentioned. They're often given the benefit of the doubt, and abuse is overlooked until either charges are filed or the funeral is scheduled.
What makes Paula's story more complicated is that the only proof she has is her memory. It's hard to believe that anyone can remember anything from such a young age, but there is growing evidence that infants can remember traumatic events. Even if you're skeptical, I'd encourage you to reserve judgment and have a listen. There's still a story here about a woman who was raised by a toxic mother and has done a whole lot of work to heal.
More From Paula
- Soft Skill Strategy Courses: softskillstrategycourses.com
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What is Positively Terrible?
Scott, his wife's fiancé, and her boyfriend walked into a bar. Now, each week Scott and Dan discuss surviving, and thriving, after trauma. Settle in my terrible listeners, today's episode is going to be Positively Terrible.
You're tuned in to positively terrible. I'm producer Dan, and each week, my buddy Scott and I discuss surviving and thriving after trauma. It's a journey that started when Scott, his wife's fiance, and her boyfriend all walked into a bar. This week's decent human being is Paula. She's got a fucked up story about attempted murder and how she's still here.
Producer Dan:Settle in my terrible listeners. Today's episode is going to be positively
Paula:terrible.
Producer Dan:Hey, Scott.
Terrible Scott:Hey, Dan. How are you doing, man?
Producer Dan:Good, buddy. How are you today?
Terrible Scott:You know, I'm doing alright. Sitting here. Got got got a got pumped up for the interview. Have baseball practice a little later today. Have a party tomorrow.
Terrible Scott:I've got all sorts of stuff going on.
Producer Dan:What a weekend. Yeah. Yeah. This is I
Terrible Scott:was gonna say this party is the low class, Oscars party that neighbor Francis has every year where everyone who is coming brings fast food with them. So I'm going to bring the meats. I'm bringing some Arby's roast beef tomorrow.
Producer Dan:A classic. Now with your Arby's roast beef, do you go horsey sauce or no horsey sauce?
Terrible Scott:I go no horsey sauce. Francis does all the horsey sauce.
Producer Dan:I'm a horsey sauce man myself.
Terrible Scott:Well, I I, you know, I don't blame you. I just like the Arby sauce, and that and that's perfect for me.
Producer Dan:Well, good to hear. I went to the shoe repair store today. I got my right boot stretched out, and it's on right now and feeling good.
Terrible Scott:Dan, that is news to me that shoes are stretched, that people have a need to have shoes stretched, and that you have a shoe guy. So I'm learning all sorts of things this morning, and it's a conversation I think that we're gonna have to finish later because we have got Paula here, and Paula has a choice right now to comment on either her love of Arby's or the number of times she's had her shoes stretched. Paula.
Paula:Well, I've never had to stretch my shoes, but my left foot is longer than my right foot. So I understand the need to spend food.
Producer Dan:Thank you, Paula. Thank you for your support. I appreciate that.
Paula:You know what?
Terrible Scott:Do you do you just go a half size up then when you buy shoes, or how does work?
Paula:No. It's just a little bit. It's not enough. I have to change sizes for the left foot, but it's just a little bit.
Terrible Scott:So you're not taking your shoes off at parties and saying, hey, look at this bit. I'm a I'm a size difference. Okay. That's probably not, although that would go over very well at the low class Oscars party that I'm going to tomorrow. Alright.
Terrible Scott:Paula, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on today. And I would like for you to describe to the audience in just a sentence or 2, what you're here to talk about today.
Paula:I'm here to talk about surviving attempted murder by my mother because most people around the world have no idea how many children survive attempted murder by their parents every single day.
Terrible Scott:Paula, that is the definition of a fucked up story. So thank you for coming on. And, I just wanna go back and talk a little bit then about these attempts and your relationship with your mother. So my first question is, when did this happen? Were you a child at the time?
Paula:I was a baby for both of them, and I have memories from both of them. I have found research that shows that babies as young as 3 months old have visual memories of traumatic events. Babies have no words in their brain so everything they remember has to be visual. And I have, the first attempt was probably closer to 3 months because I have an emotional memory of the murder attempt. The second attempt was I was I figured out was I was about 5a half when told, and I did have a visual memory.
Terrible Scott:Okay. Wow. Mhmm. That's that's just so traumatic. So tell me tell me a little bit about these experiences.
Terrible Scott:So can we start with the first one?
Paula:The first one, I only recognize that first one after a conversation with a coworker. Mhmm. Driving home from my job and I realized that anxiety was continued anxiety about the first murder memory. I I mean, the visual murder memory, I thought that was the only one until this drive home after conversation with a coworker and I hadn't recognized that my anxiety about my visual memory was higher than it should have been at that point. But after my coworker said something to me, I can't remember what she said now, but she said something and on the way home, on the drive home, I realized that there was another murder attempt and my anxiety level dropped right away.
Paula:So now I know there are only 2 murder attempts.
Terrible Scott:Okay. So what happened? Like, what what was in the attempt?
Paula:The she tried to smother me. The memory the visual memory is the first memory of my life and I've talked to people and asked what's your first memory and they've had to think back and try to figure out what their first memory was. I never had to figure out what my first memory was because it kept coming to me in front of my face. I, when that was happening I didn't know I should be paying attention to what the circumstances were that brought this memory to the front of my face. I never kept track.
Paula:It would have been useful but I didn't know I should keep track. This memory was, it was in a room, in a crib, and my father walked into the room holding a bottle. That memory to me meant I was going to live because my mother had left the room after trying to murder me. I she tried to smother me about times. I had the traumatic visual memory.
Paula:So I had the memory of being murdered, the feelings of being smothered. But growing up, I could not say to myself, mom tried to kill me because I would have gone insane living with the woman who tried to murder me. So I broke those memory pieces into separate physical, mental and emotional pieces and they would manifest at different times. When my daughter was little, I could not have her sitting on my lap because my legs hurt. Medical professionals insisted there was no reason for the pain but she couldn't sit on my lap because my legs hurt.
Paula:The the leg my legs hurt until I could say to myself, mom did try to kill me and put those words out into the world. Then the pain in my legs disappeared completely and forever. Other other clues were fascination with when I was older, an adult, fascination with movies about people whose family tried to kill them because I was watching those movies trying to figure out how to cope with putting the pieces of my memory back together so that I could get beyond it. I had nightmares. I had horrible, horrible, horrible nightmares.
Paula:The most frequent nightmare of my childhood was I was walking into a big cavern. In the center of the cavern was a bird fountain like structure with a flame in the middle of it. There was just a flame. There was no fuel for the flame, it was just a flame. I was with someone else, a bigger person And we walked up to this fire and looked at it and as we got close to it, I saw a skeleton in the flame that shrink and that was the end of the dream.
Paula:I had that nightmare dozens of times probably.
Terrible Scott:Oh, wow.
Paula:It would wake me up in the middle of the night. And that was I would guess that I had those nightmares after my mother did or said something that made me particularly afraid. I was in terror for my childhood, although I could not tell myself why. And I always knew I had to be careful around her and those that particular night there was probably when I was afraid I'd done something that meant she would kill me. Those were more in my childhood than my young childhood.
Paula:Probably by my preteens that that
Terrible Scott:Mhmm.
Paula:Nightmare had stopped. But I've had I had violent, violent, violent nightmares. Not all that I can describe because those were ever changing. I did have at least one nightmare that was directly related to the murder attempt. I could feel my face being smashed and I could feel my legs being held down.
Paula:My mother held my kicking legs down as she tried to smother me.
Terrible Scott:Was this a recurring nightmare?
Paula:This one didn't happen as often, luckily, because that was Okay. Was even more that would've been even more difficult to cope with then.
Producer Dan:Can so can you tell us a little bit about about what your childhood was like? Where'd you grow up?
Paula:I grew up.
Producer Dan:Your family dynamic like? And, you know, let's remove for a moment these events that happened before you were 1 year old, and just tell us about the environment you were around, if that's okay.
Paula:I grew up in a northern suburb of Chicago, first on the outskirts of the suburb and then closer into the town center, the village center, my father taught at Northwestern University. He was. He grew up very, very poor on a farm outside Dyersville, Iowa where Field of Dreams was born. When I went to see that movie, all I knew was that the movie was in set in Iowa. And when I came out of the movie, I said to my boyfriend at the time, that looked like Iowa, not realizing that I had been there.
Paula:And then out of Iowa, that's when I found he told me it was filled in my dietersville. So I grew up with a father who had been poor. He to get away from poverty and possibly to get away from memories of his older brother who died. He was very close to his older brother and his older brother died, got sick and died, he entered a monastery when he was 13 to get an education and he was teaching at Northwestern University when I was a baby. Monasteries do not teach their friars how to talk.
Paula:It's all my fault.
Terrible Scott:What what do you mean?
Paula:They they teach them to be silent and to listen to what we tell you. Oh,
Terrible Scott:okay.
Paula:My father after my father was out, he he left Northwestern University on a principal. His he left he quit in in support of a friend that the university had treated badly. He went to painting houses and washing windows to support us, and he told me years later that he liked washing windows because he could think whatever he wanted to think. And there was a man, a Monsignor, who visited my father and he told me, Your father's a genius. So my genius father liked enjoying, liked thinking what he wanted to think.
Paula:He met my mother. He taught as a friar, he taught at a high school and met my mother in high school. They got married when she was 20 and he was 36 because he'd been in the monastery for so long. She was the child of immigrants, 1st generation well, immigrants from Hungary that had become part of Romania after World War 1. My grandparents were living in Hungary, Germans living in Hungary.
Paula:Then after World War 1 they found themselves in Romania and did not want to live in Romania, so they came to the United States, burst down to the St. Louis area where they had relatives, Then for some reason they moved to Chicago where they didn't know anyone. Mhmm. So it was my grandparents and my mother and her older sister, my aunt Terry. And my grandmother was a paranoid schizophrenic.
Paula:I have described her words and actions to a psychologist and the psychologist said, you're probably right. She was a paranoid schizophrenic so she had no idea how to nurture anyone. And she, my mother was, my mother tried to kill me because I was her second daughter instead of her first son because her mother was probably raised to believe that she could prove herself a worthy woman only as the mother of a son and that's what my grandmother taught my mother. My mother was the second daughter who was supposed to be a son. My grandparents had a baby boy first, but he died in infancy.
Paula:Then my aunt was born and then my mother. I have no idea if my grandmother tried to kill my mother but she did threaten my grandfather with a butcher knife. He took it so seriously that he left the family and moved away. So my mother was left with a paranoid schizophrenic parent. And my mother did not know never learned how to nurture after her father left.
Paula:So she was a narcissist and we lived a decent middle class life when my mother made money more important than anything else. Money was more important than anything else other than having a son.
Terrible Scott:Did you I I know this might be a weird question because clearly there were the attempts at your life.
Paula:Mhmm.
Terrible Scott:But outside of that, was did you feel like your childhood was somewhat normal or or what?
Paula:It was. In many ways it was normal. My father loved me. He did what parents should never do. He told me I was his favorite child, but that kept me sane living with my mother.
Paula:And he How many
Terrible Scott:children were there?
Paula:6 of us.
Terrible Scott:Oh, wow. Okay.
Paula:He would take in the summer, he would take us on outings to nature preserves. We had wonderful times with my father. And my mother, until there were 4 of us, when there were just 3 of us it was easier to do. She would take us on outings. We would go on outings to the beach, we would go on outings to museums.
Paula:So in many ways my childhood was normal and in many ways it was enriching because of the outings with my mother.
Producer Dan:And what's the makeup of all 6 kids in the family? Started with 2 girls. You're number 2. Right?
Paula:2 girls, boy, girl, boy, girl.
Terrible Scott:So if I counted correctly, we've got 4 girls?
Paula:Yes. And my and my mother announced that she wanted 4 boys and 2 girls. So she made her preference for boys.
Terrible Scott:Oh, boy.
Paula:Explicit.
Terrible Scott:Okay. I was that that that you answered my follow-up question because I wasn't sure if she would just was satisfied that she got a boy or if she had the preference for boys. So she had a preference. Did you feel that growing up? I mean, you said she announced it.
Terrible Scott:What Were you a kid when she announced that?
Paula:Oh, yes.
Terrible Scott:Was that normal for her to vocalize things like that in your presence?
Paula:Oh, yeah. She said she said things like that. She said toxic words every day to me except for Christmas day every year. The only day I knew she wouldn't say something toxic to me was Christmas day. And she allowed my brothers to bully my 3rd the 3rd girl in the family, the sister who came after my brother.
Paula:I had a psychologist brother-in-law who described the boy who came after me as the god because that's how my mother treated him. So the daughter who was born after the god was we were well, we're all intelligent and and, but she allowed my 2 brothers, the god and the boy born after the sister, to bully that sister. My sister one day was reading Dear Abby in the newspaper and found a letter that described her situation exactly with brothers bullying a girl. She showed it to us and my mother immediately asked, did you write this letter? It didn't matter to her that my sister had 2 brothers bullying her.
Paula:What mattered to her was that she had to make sure that my sister did not write that letter. Nothing stopped for my sister.
Terrible Scott:Wow. That's terrible.
Paula:It's Oh, go ahead. My the god brother knew that his position in the family was based only on the fact that he was the first male. He knew that my mother did not value him as a person because he bullied the younger brother to make sure that the younger brother knew his place and did not try to take over in our mother's affections.
Terrible Scott:Well, it sounds like a lot of dysfunction cultivated by your mom.
Paula:Yes. A lot of dysfunction.
Terrible Scott:I almost missed asking this question, which was the first question that popped into my head when you said that letter. Did your sister write that letter?
Paula:No. She didn't.
Terrible Scott:Oh, okay. Well, then
Paula:some other poor family out there where the sister was being bullied by the bull.
Terrible Scott:And, Paula, I find over and over that there are so many similar situations on this planet. And one of the things that you mentioned early on was that attempts at you know, parents attempting to murder their children is more common than people realize. And
Paula:Yes.
Terrible Scott:When it's something that happens to you, you probably feel like the only person in the world. And how do people react when you tell them about all of this? Not just the the attempts at your life, but the I think you did say narcissistic mother. I hope I didn't put that word in your mouth. I did say What are people's reactions when you talk about this stuff?
Paula:Many people don't believe me. When I was in my thirties, I I talked about it in school because it because we were in a class and I forgot what the class was, but we were supposed to say what you needed in your life and this woman said she needed her mother. And I said, well, I could use a better car because I needed to I I When I was told to resolve the boy in scope pulled my chair out from under me, that's why I have this, I landed hard on my tailbone and medical professionals misdiagnosed my childhood spinal injury for 33 years, so
Terrible Scott:Oh, wow.
Paula:I have lived with out of place bones for 61 years, pelvis, hips and vertebra. I have finally got the correct diagnosis, got the correct treatment, found out the way to hold my bones in place so my muscles can do what's normal instead of what's abnormal, but it's taking a long time and I still have vertebra shifting out of place. My pelvis and hips are staying in place for the most part. But I wear this because I the buses from my shoulders to my hips still hurt from doing the wrong thing for decades. And I said, so I needed a car.
Paula:I couldn't I couldn't carry things around. Carrying a book, one book could make my back hurt Mhmm. Before I got the correct diagnosis and treatment. And this woman was appalled and she said, not your mother? And I said, no.
Paula:I'd be better off if my mother were dead. And I luckily she believed me after I told her a few things about my mother. Other people said to me, oh, your mother really loves you. You don't care what you love.
Terrible Scott:That is something that I've heard a lot in my conversations with people who have narcissistic or suspected narcissistic parents is that it's very difficult to find someone who really hears you.
Paula:Right.
Terrible Scott:Because people think that parents love their kids and They do. And only want the best for their kids.
Paula:They do. Now I have statistics I have started giving to people. There are 4 to 5 children die every day in the United States. This is not worldwide, I don't know what it is worldwide, but in the United States 4 to 5 children die every day through neglect or abuse. About 1 child dies every day through intentional actions.
Paula:I think 10 to 20 children survive attempted murder every single day. I survived 2 attempts. I've talked about a dozen people who remember 1 or both of their parents trying to kill them.
Terrible Scott:And it also makes you wonder, you said you think because there's not numbers, 10 to 20 people, but are there more than 1 a day who are dying because of that? It could
Paula:be because baby bodies are easy to hide.
Terrible Scott:Sure.
Paula:They're easy.
Terrible Scott:Well, easy to hide, hard to sometimes, it's hard to diagnose. I mean, you don't know medicine's not perfect.
Paula:Medicine's not perfect.
Terrible Scott:And it also makes me wonder if when people go in and then investigate, if there is even an investigation, if the parents are given the benefit of the doubt in
Paula:many times. There's a story, I forget her name now, but there was a woman who killed 5 of her children. Five children older than me when my mother tried to kill me and she got a pass on the first four because she was a mother and how could a mother try to kill it?
Terrible Scott:Yeah. Is that your reason for talking, for coming on this show and talking to others?
Paula:I want more people to pay attention because people like me, I became a binge eater for 25 years to bury the feelings. The memories of being murdered because I didn't know how to cope with them. Other survivors become drug addicts or alcoholics and we harm other people. I almost killed 3 children in the back seat of my car. I had 2 therapists over 5 years, two and a half years each, and the first therapist had good intentions but did almost everything wrong.
Paula:And while I was at the end of my time with her, I had my fur I had 3 momentary blackouts and I and I think the first two happened with her and I was driving when I had the first one with 3 kids in the back seat of my car. And I did cause an accident. I had I picked up the 2 children to come home with my daughter and me. I live outside of a city in a rural village, and instead of going directly home, we went to a grocery store and I blacked out when I saw a fire on the opposite side of the road. I was turning into the parking lot and all of a sudden I saw the fire and that was it.
Paula:I blacked out everything but that fire and I hit a car. Now if I had driven straight home doing 55 miles on the highway and blacked out momentarily, I would have veered off the road and probably killed those 3 kids.
Terrible Scott:Why did you blackout? I guess I'm not following entirely.
Paula:Because my first therapist gaslighted me and I keep a journal, I've been keeping a journal of my daily life since 1983. I just read about my life and I'm going through the therapy years of my journal to turn into a book so people know what good therapy is and bad therapy is because my second therapist was better. And she made coping with the daily details of my life so much harder that I couldn't cope, that I was having difficulty coping. And I blacked out because there was too much for me to cope with at that moment when I saw the fire.
Terrible Scott:Okay. So just your body more or less shut down is what I think I'm hearing.
Paula:Mentally, I shut down. Mentally, I shut down. It was a mental blackout. I did all I saw was the fire. I forgot I was driving.
Paula:I forgot I was on the road. I forgot there was I was turning into parking lot. I forgot there were kids in the backseat of the car. I forgot everything except this light.
Terrible Scott:Wow. Were there injuries in the accident?
Paula:No. Luckily there were no injuries. I was lucky.
Terrible Scott:Okay. Yeah. I'm I'm I am glad to hear that. So happy that it didn't, you know, really hurt someone's life. Now, Paula, when you look back at these incidents and you were young, do you ever question your memory about them?
Paula:No. I don't. Because for one thing, for perhaps the most important thing with the memory, the visual memory of the trauma, After, I had a dream one night in which which allowed me to wake up and say mom did try to kill me. After that, all of the clues just disappeared except that the memory came back in color. Up until that point, it had been in grays.
Paula:I didn't see any color and I didn't hear anything. The memory came back, I could see my father was wearing a blue shirt. I could see the walls of the room were yellow. I could feel heat from an open window and that's how I decided that I must have been about 5 and a half months old because it would have been August. And I remembered hearing a loud noise that did not stop.
Paula:My father was teaching at Northwestern and my family was living in what they called the huts. There were huts for professors, teaching staff back then. We were living in the huts near campus. Northwestern University is in Evanston and in that area there are a number of hospitals. My mother would have heard that loud noise too that didn't stop and I think she thought it was a police car.
Paula:I think someone she thought someone saw her trying to kill me and called the police. It was probably an ambulance going to a nearby hospital. Someone else's tragedy saved my life.
Terrible Scott:Did you ever talk to either of your parents about these memories?
Paula:Not during my father died before I could put the memories together, put the pieces together. And before I say he died when I was 30, I put the pieces together when I was 42. And I had distanced myself from my mother. I went to I saw her a couple times after I admitted to myself that she tried to kill me. She got married again and then there was she got married again in the east and then came back to the Chicago area for a reception for the Chicago area relatives and friends.
Paula:So I saw her those two times. I didn't say anything to her because I wasn't ready to say anything and because I knew all the time that I had those clues and I had a bad relationship with my mother. I knew that if I ever really started talking about our mother that my siblings would support our mother. My mother, to protect herself from anything I might start to say, she convinced everyone to ignore what I said and discount what I did And they were so good at it that when we became adults, my siblings treated me like a trespasser in their lives. So I knew that telling the truth about my memories would mean the end of my family And I wasn't ready to do that.
Paula:Later in 1993 and then through 1995, I tried to keep a relationship with a couple of my siblings But it failed and it's from 1995 on, I've had no contact with anyone except my aunt. I tried to stay in touch with my father's family but they believed my mother. So I have no contact with anyone. I feel like a holocaust survivor whose entire family died in the holocaust. After I walked away from my mother, my aunt sent me a Christmas card every year until her death.
Paula:She was the only person who knew what my mother was capable of, her sister.
Terrible Scott:I think that's also something that's common that there are people who know and there are a lot of people who don't.
Paula:Mhmm.
Terrible Scott:And
Producer Dan:Prefer not to.
Paula:Or yeah. Prefer not to. Right. That's a good And
Terrible Scott:and I I don't know how to to ask this, and I don't want it to be like I am diminishing any experience. This is just a an an actual question that I have. Is is the real of that I mean, you've had what sounds like we'll call them recovered memories or memories that you put together the story later of an attempt on your life or 2 attempts on your life. But in between, you had many years of being raised by a narcissist or a suspected narcissist.
Paula:Mhmm.
Terrible Scott:Is the story here for you, the story of your life more about those attempts, or is it really the entire experience of being raised by a toxic mother?
Paula:It's more about the experience of being a toxic mother and I would not say that I recovered memories.
Terrible Scott:Okay.
Paula:We had those clues all along. I had the pain in my legs. I did not that was continuous until I was 42. I had the nightmares. I had the fascination with movies about family members who survived murder attempt by other family members and there were other clues.
Paula:I have not recovered. They were continuous until I was 42.
Terrible Scott:Okay.
Paula:It's more about being raised by her because after her attempts to kill me physically failed, she did her best to kill me mentally and emotionally. She if she had ever said at any point, I did this and it was terrible and I apologize, it would have been okay. I understand situations can make people do things that they would normally do. And she was stressed. Especially since I was stressed, I screamed at my daughter because I could not cope with these memories, I didn't know how to cope with them.
Paula:When stress in my normal life became overwhelming I screamed at my daughter. I stopped screaming when I said to myself, mom did try to kill me.
Terrible Scott:Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot to come to terms with and
Paula:There is.
Terrible Scott:When you're holding all of that weight inside, whether or not you realize what it is I mean, I can sit here and say that I have reacted poorly in situations that are completely unrelated. The reason is completely unrelated to whatever situation brings that to the to the surface. And it's hard to recognize what that is. And I'm I'm I'm glad that you do, and we're self aware enough to be able to tell us right now that, hey, I had reactions I didn't like from myself, and it took some growth and understanding for you to be able to get there. And speaking of growth and understanding, what are you up to today?
Terrible Scott:We're talking about the thriving after trauma parts now. How are you doing? What are you up to today?
Paula:Well, I'm teaching people what I started doing as a child. My father my my mother was brutal to everyone emotionally and my father really loved my mother and he took it hard. He went about his daily life, going to work, coming home, doing things with us, but he would come home from his job and drink 2 to 3 quarts of beer at night. He became a quiet alcoholic to bury his distress, which he can't bury forever. So he would go into rages that could last for hours or days and during one of those rages he accidentally broke my older sister's arm.
Paula:Though I was terrified of my mother, I was afraid of my father's rages. As a child, I developed soft skills to reach beyond my family to find something positive for me from adults. And I felt safe for the first time with an adult at age 7 with my first second grade teacher. She got married during the year and moved away. I have no memory of the teacher who came back after her because my other teacher had made me feel safe.
Paula:Then when I was 11, I said something to the principal of the school, Sister Vianney. She's dead now so I can say her name. There's an all girl, I mean it wasn't all girl, it was an elementary Catholic school. I said something to her. I don't remember what I said, but she found it so delightful that she started helping me come to her office for conversations.
Paula:I remember sitting across the desk from her in her office talking and laughing and having wonderful times. At age 11, I felt equal to any person in any room because of those conversations with the adults in charge at the elementary school. So I have gone on to develop more soft skill strategies and I now teach them to people. I have never felt the imposter syndrome because I've always felt equal to any person in any room. Most people don't have that experience so now I'm telling people to remind themselves that every person in any room is a human being and they are equal to every person in that room in humanity.
Paula:And if they continually remind themselves of that equality, then they can start feeling other qualities. They can open doors to other feelings of equality. And I have specific strategies. When I was 18, I didn't go to college because my mother would have chosen where I went and what I took and I didn't want that. So I got a job at the bottom of a corporation where I had no power and I was still list living at home and listening to those toxic words every day.
Paula:When I was in the first couple of months of that job, one of the, women in a department next to mine started saying toxic words about a summer worker. I was a permanent worker, but every summer the corporation hired temporary workers, summer workers. This woman, older woman, middle aged probably, started saying toxic words about one of the summer workers and I decided that since I had to listen to toxic words at home, that if I could do something about the toxic words in my workplace I was going to do something about it. And I did. And I used my first, I call it bad gossip strategy, discouraging bad gossip strategy and got the result I wanted.
Paula:It ended.
Terrible Scott:Well, that's awesome. That that that is what we call being a decent fucking human. Right? We use our abilities and our powers for good. So that's awesome, Paula.
Terrible Scott:So you said you work with people and help people with their soft skills. How would someone find you if they wanted to work with you?
Paula:I have online self study courses for soft skill strategies. 1, about good, bad and ugly gossip because gossip can be good and I'm not the only person saying that. And then one for understanding behavior styles and guiding values in relationships so you know how to give people invitation moments for loyalty. They are at softskillstrategycourses.com. You take the courses and then I send you a newsletter every month with new strategies, new book, real world examples.
Paula:I use real world examples for everything. I tell stories from my life, stories from other people's lives.
Terrible Scott:Alright. Paula, do you do you have one real world example that you wanna share with with our listeners right now so that they'd have an idea of what they'd get from you?
Paula:Nick, well, I have I'll tell you from one of the free lessons. I have 3 lessons free on my website. One of them is 3 behavior transforming steps. A woman came to me distressed that she was going to have to work with someone she had never gotten along with. They they were going to be in the same department working together.
Paula:She did not want to work with this one. So I asked about the woman, I knew I knew something about the behavior style of the woman who was asking me for advice. I asked her about the other woman. She told me and I gave her 3 steps to take to improve the relationship and she took those 3 steps and turned the relationship around. And the strategies were, this the woman asking me for advice was an influence behavior style in the DISC behavior system, DISC.
Paula:The woman who was her new coworker was a conscientiousness behavior style, the c. Influence and conscientiousness are opposite behavior styles, which of course is why they were having difficulty. But I said to the influence person, I said, conscientiousist people like to control their environment. They like to have some control of their environment. So figure out something you can do to get a control of.
Paula:Something. The woman was just a coworker but she gave the conscientiousness person control of the files in their office so that she was in charge of the files. I also said, tell her what you like about how she manages whatever control you give her and then ask her about her thoughts. So the influence person told the conscientiousness person what she liked about the files and asked about her thoughts. The relationship turned around completely.
Paula:It was much more successful than I realized it thought it would be. It took me 10 years to figure out why it wasn't successful. But Right. What happened was I accidentally told the influence person to satisfy the conscientiousness person physically, mentally and emotionally. Control of the files is physical, emotion was hearing what was good about the control of the files, and mentally was asking about their thoughts.
Paula:You do that and you can transform a relationship.
Terrible Scott:Paula, I love it and I will share without going too deep into it that Dan and I at the place we used to work together does use the disk model. Oh. And I am a c myself, a c CD, and the people who were on the opposite side of the personality profile were always challenging. You know? The the eyes, the influencers Right.
Terrible Scott:Really fun to hang out with, really difficult for me to work with because of our different our different needs and desires and motivations. So I very much understand and appreciate the that story. And if you are interested, as a listener, I I'm a big fan of the disc. I know all personality profiles have their limitations, but it does a good job in helping you at least think about how you're approaching things and why rather than just reacting, and also understanding that the other person is behaving in certain ways not to get under your skin, even though those damn eyes certainly seem like they're trying to get under your skin.
Producer Dan:I'm pretty sure I'm an I. I think I'm an I and a d.
Paula:I'm an I.
Producer Dan:Scott's been sitting here seething this entire time.
Terrible Scott:That's what I'm saying. I love talking to the eyes. I love socially, but Right. Working and and, honestly fun. Well, right.
Terrible Scott:And and, honestly, once you get the the understanding and the strategies down, it becomes a lot different because there are different ways to interact with people. And once you are able to recognize that someone I mean, once you're familiar with it, you can start to guess what people are and be pretty accurate with that. So
Paula:Actually, I have another website called soft I mean, smile spark success dot com where I give a lot of information about the DISH behavior styles and sprainer guiding values, and I have a page of verbal clues. One of the easiest ways to identify this behavior style, this behavior guiding values, is to listen to what people say about themselves. So you go, you read through these verbal clues and you can identify their primary behavior style.
Terrible Scott:Alright. Well, great. Thank you, Paula. And I know that some people are skeptical of the personality stuff. So am I to some extent, but I do really like the DISC profile.
Terrible Scott:So that's one thing that I I absolutely agree with here, Paula. I think it's a great tool. But thank you so much for coming on here today, Paula. Is there anything that you wanted to get to that we haven't yet? We we're really short on time, but I just wanna make sure you get the last word in.
Paula:I can I started using soft skills with myself as a child? I listened to positive words I could trust. I spoke positive words others could trust and I spoke positive words to myself. You start I talk about taking positive control in the small spaces of situations and relationships and the first place I took positive control was in my ears and my mouth.
Terrible Scott:Just like an eye talking to herself. No. I'm kidding, Paula. I appreciate that. I think that's wonderful advice.
Terrible Scott:And, Paula, we're so grateful that you came on the show today. We're humbled. We're honored. This this was a wonderful conversation, Paula. Thank you so much for being on.
Paula:Thank you, Dan.
Terrible Scott:For sure. And listeners, remember, you can follow us on social media at Positively Terrible. You can contact us via email if you've got a story that you wanna share or you wanna get the decent fucking human tattoo. I'm pausing for Dan to Dan, you've don't do it. Don't do it is what Dan always says.
Terrible Scott:Don't do it.
Producer Dan:Don't do it.
Terrible Scott:Alright. You threw my pace off by not saying that, Dan. But anyway, as always, this has been absolutely, positively terrible.
Paula:Positively Terrible is a part of the Terrible Podcast Network.